Artworks

Kiki Smith
Woman on Snake, 2010
Ink on Nepalese paper
71.26 x 59.45 inches (181 x 151 cm)
(GL14840)

Kiki Smith’s art is a symbiosis between a sensitivity to matter, a taste for texture, and a rich and vibrant dream world, taking its source both from the artist's intimate imaginary world and from the memory of the tales and mythologies which shaped her. Woman and Snake is a large recent drawing on Nepalese paper, a traditional handicraft support she has often used. The female figure is also characteristic: it is at once a self-portrait and a portrait of a woman per se. She is seen here taming a snake, evidently, a phallic one. A similar drawing can be found in the collections of the MNAM Centre Pompidou Museum. After having been shown in American museums, these last years, Kiki Smith’s protean body of work has been the object of seminal exhibitions across Europe: Haus der Kunst, Munich (2018), Monnaie de Paris (2019), Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2020).